Inaugural PhD Minor Alum Keynote: "Rethinking Maternalism: Sex, Power, and Embodiment in Côte d’Ivoire" with Elizabeth Jacob

As a part of  "Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality 2025 Conference" hosted by the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (FGSS), this talk explores the Baule ritual of adjanou: a practice where women strip naked, coat their bodies in white kaolin clay, and sing and dance to drive destructive forces from their communities. In gesturing to their genitals, practitioners invoke their status as mothers to fuel their spiritual warfare. A centuries-old mode of moral rebuke, adjanou is often celebrated as a testament to the traditional political authority of West African women. Yet the practice of adjanou—with its contentious elements of maternalism and gender essentialism—can also invite feminist skepticism and critique. This talk argues that attention to adjanou, in both its historical and contemporary manifestations, can open political possibilities for strategic maternalism and expand feminist approaches to gender, sexuality, and embodiment.

Elizabeth Jacob is Assistant Professor of History at University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Stanford PhD, 2023).

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See the full conference schedule and abstracts here.

Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Center for African Studies.